I Haunted His Dreams After He Dumped Me For My Roommate Chapter 07

I Haunted His Dreams After He Dumped Me For My Roommate Chapter 07

The next morning, the wind had picked up.

The forecast said a hurricane might pass through.

Derek found me. “Yvie, before the hurricane hits, come with me into town to stock up.”

I got into the car and shut the door.

Through the window, I saw Vera tug Ethan’s sleeve, asking to talk privately. He followed her toward the garden.

“Vera’s about to confess,” Derek said, starting the car. “By the time we’re back, they’ll probably be together.”

I watched Ethan’s back.

If he said yes to Vera, the System would reveal the girl in his dreams was me.

The person he was crazy about was the one he wanted most to erase.

The mountain road twisted and turned.

Derek couldn’t help asking, “Why do you hate Vera so much? I mean, you guys broke up. He can date whoever he wants.”

I stared out the window a long time before I spoke.

“Vera isn’t just my roommate.”

My parents went away for work when I was little. They left me behind in our small town.

In middle school, I went to Chicago suburbs for winter break to spend the holidays with them. That’s when I found out they’d been raising another daughter.

A coworker had died in an accident, and my parents had taken over caring for his kid.

Vera lived in my room. She acted more like their real daughter than I did.

My mom was the first to notice Vera had a mole on her wrist in the exact same spot as mine.

She said, “I just missed you so much, that’s why I dote on her extra.”

Vera pulled a pajama set from her closet and handed it to me.

But right as she passed it over, she started tearing up in front of my mom.

My mom didn’t say a word, but her eyes were full of heartache.

I stood there, awkward and frozen.

Too scared to take it. Too scared to tell my mom the truth-that earlier, sneaking a peek into Vera’s closet, I’d realized for the first time that girls my age were supposed to wear the soft little bras their mothers bought them.

I transferred to a boarding school in the Chicago suburbs for two years.

Once, I had a fever and called my mom, hoping to come home and rest for half a day.

“Mom, I’m not feeling well.”

She said, “So what do you want me to do about it?”

The moment I heard her tone, I couldn’t say another word. But my fingers still dug into the wall beside the phone.

–

I wanted to ask her why, just last week when Vera said the cafeteria food didn’t suit her, did she pick her up and take her home for dinner?

“Why can’t I come home?”

My mom refused to admit she favored Vera. She said she just happened to be free that day.

Translation: I should be more understanding.

My mom sighed, in that deeply calm, disappointed voice, “This is exactly why nobody likes you.’

So many things were out of my control.

Vera was prettier, more outgoing closer to the daughter my mom actually wanted.

But I didn’t want to live trapped in that comparison.

Junior year of middle school, I moved back to my hometown to finish school.

The day they sent me back to that small Midwest town, before I walked into the train station, 1 turned around, hoping to catch one last glimpse of my mom.

All I saw was her looking down at Vera tucked under her arm, asking, “What do you want for dinner

tonight?”

In that moment I had only one thought.

Good thing I’m leaving.

If I just ran far enough, maybe I could escape all of this.

How old do you have to be before you stop needing love?

I clawed my way from that small town to a state school in Boston.

Vera said she bombed her exams and ended up as my roommate at the same college.

Later, when she found out I was dating an Ivy League guy online, shock flickered across her face for the first time-followed by jealousy and anxiety she couldn’t hide fast enough.

She asked flatly, “He must be pretty ugly, right?”

But that night, lying in her dorm bed, she spent hours digging through social media and Google. She pieced it together: Ethan Chase was famously hot, got a direct admission into an elite program, and came from a family so powerful you couldn’t trace its limits.

She couldn’t find a single flaw.

She kept grilling me about how Ethan and I met.

I knew what she really wanted to ask: “What makes you so special?”

She was convinced we wouldn’t last.

And of course, she was right.

When she told me Ethan had accepted her friend request-it was exactly like that day at the train station all over again. She knew I was watching, so she held my mom’s hand even tighter right in front of me.

Again and again, she won.

So this time, I didn’t run.

I decided to fight back.